3.

It's 8.14am and I am already at the office. Only 6 hours of sleeeeepppppp! *slumpsontothetable*

Anyway, my friends have been asking where I am working at and everytime I say advertising agency, I'd almost always get the same reaction, "Wahhhh!" or "Best tu!" (the reaction gets even more bizarre when I say it's in Damansara...) I finally understood their reaction one day when they told me that advertising equals to creative hence people who work in advertising are creative.

I personally believe that everyone is creative in their own way and people kinda tend to forget that there are other cogs in the machine (ececeh, gune metaphor!), there are other people that drive an ad agency.

So todddaaaaayyyy kanak-kanak sekalian, cikgu nak ajar tentang the going-ons of an ad agency or in other words, how an ad agency functions.

First of all, the frontliners or the Servicing Department (sometimes also known as Account Management, ikut suke la kan agensi tu nak panggil diorang ni ape kan) In my agency's case (not MY agency okay, the agency I work in la more like) there are three business units made up of at least three Account Executives handling various accounts. Now, these people, their job's to go out, meet clients, listen to them and them come back, interpret what the clients want and /or need and then come back and explain to the Creative Department what needs to be done.

Basically, the clients will tell them "Oh hey, we wanna drive up sales/create brand or company awareness so we want you to come up with a print ad/billboard/TVC/radio commercial/brochures/anything and everything in the world to help us achieve our objective." Then these servicing people will ask all the relevant questions la like how much is their budget, are they looking at a campaign or a one-time thing etc. Potpetpotpet, conclude all already, then they'll come back and strategise on what can be done.

After that, it's time to brief the people who'll be doing the work. Usually, in my case, they'll log in the job and Traffic will handle the delegation of work. Now a Traffic Manager doesn't and I repeat, doesn't go around the office with a whistle in her mouth and a Stop sign in hand, she's not a lollipop man nor is she a traffic policewoman.

Upon receiving a job request, the Traffic Manager will assign a team of Creatives for said job. One team usually consists of an Art Director (but since we only have one Art Director, William is involved in allllllllll jobs) a designer and a copywriter. Then a briefing will be arranged and everyone involved, including the Creative Director and the Servicing-in-charge will attend and the job will be explained. Here, they will elaborate la what the client wants and how to give the clients what they want.

After that, all the brainstorming for concepts will start to happen and internals will be scheduled where ideas are thrown back and forth and the pros and cons of each idea will be discussed. Then more potpetpotpet debates and whatnots, when a concept is chosen, the Creatives will start on the execution.

Mooooovvviinnnggg on to the Creative Studio. It usually consists of a Creative Director, a few Art Directors, copywriters and designers. Usually the Art Director will be in charge of the art direction, see whether the visuals used are appropriate, maybe can extend one line or shorten a line, add dots here, turn the ad purple or rainbow-coloured etc. whereas copywriters write the copy which is basically the words you see on an ad and the designers make it happen! There WILL be changes along the way because the ad will be sent out to the client for approval, this specific time is called the material deadline. Then the client may want us to put a clown at the side of an ad or sometimes even Servicing will give their opinions to enhance said ad and after more changes have been made (the client will get a copy of the ad after each change), after copywriters have proofread everything and somehow everyone's satisfied then the Final Artwork (FA) will be printed out and all the people involved from servicing to the Creative team to the Production Manager will give their approval by signing on the work.

Lastly, the ad will go into productioooonnn. The Production Manager's work is to do math, seriously. When a job comes in, and all the collaterals (eg print ads, TVC, radio script, brochures blablabla) have been identified, Production Manager has to count the cost and estimate how much the agency is gonna charge and then the estimate will be given to the client to be signed.

There is another part of the agency, the Media department. These people do media planning. They dont buy media, our sister company's doing that. Media people plan the client's media schedule. Say they give us about RM900k of advertising budget and they wanna do TVC for the next 3 months to increase their brand awareness so Media people have to crack their heads and figure out how best to spend the money and make sure the clients get their money's worth and achieves their goal. Calculations are involved here but they said it's easy. I took Media Planning in college, I loved the calculations part but the scheduling part, not so much. Haha.

Anyway, side note, my company's Media Department is looking for interns if anyone's interested.

I'd better stop because I bet no one's going to even finish reading this entry. Haha. There's another side to an agency which is the AV production. I havent been on a shoot yet so I dont really know what goes on there, I've been told what goes on there la but being told and being there yourself are two different things. So I guess the next time they trust me enough to let me loose onto a TVC shoot or a radio commercial recording, I'd be sure to continue Ad Agency 101.